Fish Story
Carlos, the nephew of our host Zoila, came to say hello and chat. During our conversation, we asked him what he did for a living. He said he was a fisherman.
That seemed odd, he was dressed very elegantly in a suit and tie. My Spanish isn’t great, but ‘pescador’ is an easy word. So I challenged him, that he wasn’t dressed like a fisherman. He smiled. He actually has two jobs – he is the vice-mayor of Manta, and manages a fishing boat.
Manta is a fishing town. When you drive along the Malecon (boardwalk), the main traffic circle spins you around a reminder of where the wealth and fame of this town originates.
We asked Carlos if we could see his boat – would it be in port anytime during our stay. Well, it was in port at that moment, and yes, hop into his truck. So we drove to the port, navigated through the security guards, and got to see his boat unloading tuna.
It’s a medium size fishing boat. A crew of 20 will take her out for 30 days, and then return with a hold full of frozen tuna – as much as 200 tons. The tuna is being hauled out of the hold (the black netting bag in mid-air), and loaded into waiting trucks.
This guy is on one of the trucks releasing the nets, standing atop a 6-foot mountain of frozen tuna. Must be a difficult job.
Within a few minutes, these fish will be delivered to one of the canneries that line the main road to the airport. Starkist, Bumblebee, and other big and small vendors all have factories here. These are good jobs on the boats, and good jobs in the canneries.
There are a few larger boats, which are very profitable. The harbor is filled with much smaller boats, which probably provide a precarious living. Tuna feeds them all.
The thing we noticed right away was that the tuna being hauled out of the boats was tiny – the large ones were 2 to 3 feet long (you can sort of see them in the earlier pictures). That wasn’t what we imagined when we thought of tuna. We asked, and yes, everyone remembers when the tuna were much larger.
Those happy bankers at the Banco Central del Ecuador (see earlier story) have a museum across the boardwalk from the port – one of the nicest buildings on the street. On the third floor is an exhibit of photos celebrating the fishing industry, and a remarkable movie of the local fishermen, taken in the 1950’s by a Swedish visitor.
In those days, the fishermen went out in tiny, 2-man wooden sailboats – not much bigger than canoes. They caught their fish just offshore and came back home every night to their beds. There were so many fish that catching them hardly seemed like a challenge (one scene in the remarkable movie shows a fisherman simply spearing fish). Casting a net from shore brought in buckets of anchovies.
That movie also shows a 12-foot tuna being landed – a remarkable catch in such tiny boats since they were too big to bring onboard - that called for a celebratory round of drinks. It was a scene right out of Hemingway.
But even the more-recent photos show 6- and 7-foot tuna regularly being brought in on small fishing boats. None of the tuna in the photos are a tiny as today’s catch, and none of them required hunting across the open sea for a month.
It is clear that the tuna are being systematically fished to extinction. On the recent voyage, Carlo’s boat patrolled for 25 days catching only 5 tons of tuna. On the way back, they ran into a school of tuna, and finished the trip with a very profitable 100 tons.
But tuna migrate north to Columbia and Panama, and south to Peru and Chile. Each fleet is catching every fish they can find. Beyond the 200 km limit, the huge Spanish trawlers are vacuuming the ocean.
We’ve lived this story on Canada’s east coast, and it doesn’t end happily. The future of Manta will not be earned from tuna for long.
(Carlos and Zoila our host)